Thread by @shahanSean

Have you ever heard of the early medieval tales, “the Three Rings” 7 “the Three Imposters”? They offer a wonderful medieval alternative to the (now pernicious) ‘judeo-christian trad.’ trope. Unlike ‘judeo-christian’ they r more ‘Abrahamic’ & do not exclude Islam as a 3rd ‘other’.

Both allegories likely emerged in early medieval Islamic world, whence they subsequently spread to Europe and exerted considerable influence the humanists of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Let’s begin with the Three Rings.

One of the most famous European versions of the tale appears in the *Decameron* of the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). The story is told by the Florentine youth, Neifile (right), who represents the virtue of charity.

The story is set in the court of the Muslim ruler Saladin who summons a wealthy Alexandrian Jew named Melchizedek to his court to pose him a scandalous question,

"Men speak highly of your wisdom. What conclusion have you reached concerning the ways of God? Which of the three great religions is the truly authentic one? Judaism, Christianity, or Islam?" Melchizedek escapes the trap by answering the sultan with the following story

One of the earliest version of this story appears in an Arabic rendering Persian lore about kings of legendary and historic past in a work attributed to the belletrist Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālabī (961-1039).
archive.org/details/histoi…

He relates the story of a king named Gōdarz (Jawḏarz) whose three concubines of exceeding beauty demanded to know which of them he loved best. To each, he secretly gave a ring; and to each he said that she who has the most precious ring is the most beloved.

Perhaps even early than that, is the version that appears in dialogue between a Xian Patriarch of the Church of the East, Timothy I, and the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdī, which purportedly took place in CE 781. Timothy’s version, however, is about a pearl rather than three rings.

"The Three Impostors" story is a darker take on a similar theme. It 1st appears in Siyāsatnāmah of Saljuqs’ vizier Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 1092). He attributes a statement to Abū Tāhir al-Jannābī the leader of Qarmaṭīs who destroyed the Kaʿbah and abducted its black stone in 930 CE..

... meant to shock his readers. He alleged said, “It was a shepherd, a physician, and a camel-driver that led this nation astray!”
ما أضلّ هذه الأمّة إلّا راعٍ وطبيب وجمّال

What's really odd is when Pope Gregory IX charges the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II w/ nearly this same statement in 1239. (The passage is from *Vita Gregorii IX*)

imposters>impostors
7>&

Here we might just have the seed that eventually grew into the famous "Treatise of the Three Imposters" tract that inspired Voltaire's famous saying, "If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent Him," and the influence of the Islamic world on the Radical Enlightenment

If you're interested in more on this topics, I recommend this lecture by Jonathan Israel